Take ARM, the upstart British chip company which licenses the chip technology which powers virtually all mobile phones today. Although they’ve traditionally been relegated to “dumb” chips because of their low cost and low power consumption, they’ve been riding a wave of disruptive innovation to move beyond just low cost “dumb” featurephones into more expensive smartphones and, potentially, into new low-power/always-connected netbooks.

More interestingly, though, is the recent revelation that ARM chips have been used in more than just low-power consumer-oriented devices, but also in production grade servers which can power websites, something which has traditionally been in the domain of more expensive chips by companies like AMD, Intel, and IBM.